


The Harvest Moon Shining in Your Eyes

by darkfaerieclaw



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon
Genre: Gen, Wordcount: 100-500
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-19
Updated: 2010-11-19
Packaged: 2017-10-13 06:56:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/134276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkfaerieclaw/pseuds/darkfaerieclaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hotaru Tomoe adores her father more than any man in the world, but she isn't completely oblivious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Harvest Moon Shining in Your Eyes

Hotaru wobbled home an hour late from school the day of her twelfth birthday, feeling as bruised as the peach that had been left rotting on the kitchen counter since last week, clueless as to how she had gotten that way. She had been feeling sicker by the day lately, less like a girl and more like that peach, nearly eager to be thrown away and forgotten. Her father had told her so little of what it was in her that made her suffer, but Hotaru was glad for it. Names mattered, she knew; since birth, Hotaru was a thing of death's, even in the writ of her name. And perhaps one day she would rise from the earth to be reborn, but that day was far. How far, she never wanted to know. Today, that moment, was what mattered now, putting one foot before the other, ignoring the way her weight made her right foot ache worryingly and how breathing drew fire into her body. Her father would care for her and she would take care never to let her foot feel like it had been split with a carving knife again, and then she could lie down with a book in her room and this day would never have to matter again.

"Oh, what's happened to you, then, darling?" Hotaru's father sighed when he caught sight of her, flinching, small, and hurt even alone with him, though Soichi Tomoe was the one person in the whole of the world who could make her feel like the blood - which even Hotaru could tell wasn't all her own, and she couldn't remember how or why any of it was on her - was a trifling thing.

"Papa," Hotaru said, while he wrapped her bloodied torso. "I'm so sorry."

When he looked up at her from his work, it wasn't Dr. Tomoe's eyes Hotaru saw. There was nothing but the over-bright reflection of the sanitized light of his lab, and not for the first time Hotaru noticed the unnatural gleaming seemed more natural on his face than his own eyes. The smile was like watching something unused to emotion try its hand at sympathy, trying to recall which was a grin and which a grimace. Of course Hotaru's father wasn't right in the head, and of course he'd changed for the worse, but this was her father. His were the hands that gently put her back together when she shattered (even if she suspected she was missing pieces she shouldn't be), his was the voice that soothed her darkest fears (even if he salved them with lies), and she loved him. Of course she did. That was never in question.

She only wished his eyes were star-bright and hidden when she caught him looking at the blood, or when he found her freshly woken and confused from a blackout. She wished she couldn't see him. It would make it so much easier to pretend.


End file.
